Art

I wrote about Marcus Coates a while ago, delighted by his work Dawn Chorus, though saddened I missed the installation.

Today I've been chairing a series of talks at this rather lovely conference, including a talk by Coates himself. What a marvellous chap. His work is a sustained investigation into modalities of being, questioning in particular what it means to be human through exploring animal sounds, animal identities, animal territorialities. It's often funny, always thoroughly thought-provoking, and often sublime art.

"Most artists portray nature, Marcus Coates becomes it." explains one arts site. "He’s run through the Hayward Gallery dressed as a badger, performed primitive shamanic rituals on a Liverpool housing estate wearing stag antlers and he’s hung himself up a tall tree to experience what it’s like being a goshawk."

He might be coming out hawking with me and Mabel — how cool is that?

Here he is up a tree being a goshawk

And here he is doing his shamanic thing.




Also looks like I might be taking one of the top bods of Friends of the Earth out hawking too. Spreadin' the falconry word....